better days--not but what she was now very comfortably off--she
delighted in talking of her misfortunes, and of the perfidiousness of
man; and in Hilda, who had, poor girl, nothing else to listen to, she
found a most attentive audience. As was only natural where such a
charming person and such a good listener were concerned, honest Mrs.
Jacobs soon grew fond of her interesting lodger, about whose husband's
circumstances and history she soon wove many an imaginary tale; for,
needless to say, her most pertinent inquiries failed to extract much
information from Hilda. One of her favourite fictions was that her
lodger was the victim of her handsome husband, who had in some way
beguiled her from her home beyond the seas, in order to keep her in
solitary confinement and out of the reach of a hated rival. Another,
that he kept her thus that he might have greater liberty for his own
actions.

In course of time these ideas took such possession of her mind that
she grew to believe in them, and, when speaking of Hilda to any of her
other lodgers, would shake her head and talk of her mysteriously as a
"lamb" and a "victim."

As for that lady herself, whilst far from suspecting her good
landlady's gloomy surmises, she certainly fell more and more a prey to
depression and anxieties, and occasionally even to suspicion, to all
of which evils she grew increasingly liable as she drew nearer to an
event that was no longer very distant. She could not but notice a
change in Philip's manner on the rare occasions when he was able to
visit her, of which the most marked developments were fits of silence
and irritability. A certain reticence also, that became more and more
noticeable as time went on, led her to feel that there was an
invisible something growing up between them--a something that the